Zero Poverty Society: Ensuring a Decent Income for All

The notion that every person living amidst the relative affluence of the rich world has a right to a minimum income enabling social participation, be it frugally and soberly, holds as a fundamental matter of social justice to most people. But how can we make sure that every person has a decent minimum income allowing for a life with dignity in societies rich enough to afford such a right? How can we ensure that minimum income support is cost-effective and compatible with other goals such as promoting work effort, self-reliance, and upward mobility? How can political support for such schemes be fostered and made robust?

Zero Poverty Society assesses the current state of minimum income protection in the rich world, building on original empirical analysis. It also engages with debates on topics as diverse as optimal targeting and means-testing, administrative complexity, non-take-up, behavioural economics, the political economy of minimum income protection, and basic income.

Marchal and Marx conclude that more adequate poverty prevention is possible, without the costs having to be prohibitive. However, they are sceptical about ’silver-bullet’ solutions such as basic income. Adequate minimum income protection is not a matter of getting one scheme or policy right. It is a matter of getting multiple policy levers right, in the right configuration. Incremental, context-conscious expansion is the way forward if we really care about the most vulnerable.

Sarah Marchal, Assistant Professor of Socio-economic Inequality and Policy, Department of Sociology, University of Antwerp, Ive Marx, Professor of Socio-Economic Policy, University of Antwerp

Sarah Marchal is Assistant Professor at the University of Antwerp. She is affiliated with the Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, where she conducts research on the design, accessibility, and effectiveness of targeted social policy provisions, from a cross-national comparative perspective. She has collaborated on various international research projects on social policy, poverty reduction, and inequality.

Ive Marx is Professor of Socio-Economic Policy at the University of Antwerp, Director of the Centre for Social Policy Herman Deleeck, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn. He has done research on a wide range of topics including minimum income protection, poverty and wealth, and has published a number of books, including Minimum Income Protection in Flux (with Kenneth Nelson), two volumes on changing inequalities and societal impacts published with Oxford University Press, and the Handbook of In-Work Poverty (with Henning Lohmann).